Gibraltar is an odd place. The road signs are British but people drive on the right. The people are British but most speak with soft Spanish lisps. I had a pint of tepid Old Speckled Hen in The Lord Nelson on the afternoon I arrived. I was killing time, waiting for my friend Jamie's flight to get in. As is happened, a thick fog shrouded Gibraltar rock that evening and the plane was redirected to Malaga. I heard staff in the airport making jovial banter about the "pea-souper" that had fallen.

Snorting with disbelief at my own stubbornness, I silence the dutiful alarm and sit up. My bedroom is vast and without ceiling. It is a home to some, but not to me. The wind that has blasted out of the north for many thousands of years has completed its nightly ritual of weakening to a stiff breeze. I had foregone a tent as the dust and sand have a way of getting in. With no tent it piles up beside me and then simply blows past.

Location: Mauritania - Morocco border
Day 1,536
Miles on the clock: 40,205

Loic was waiting at the airport in Dakar. We'd met briefly one night in Southwest China three years earlier and he'd slurred over the umpteenth watery beer that I should get in touch when I reach Senegal.I unboxed and built my bicycle on the roadside before following his motorbike to the bungalow room he rented. I dumped my kit and we headed onto a Reggae party with Rose, his Burkinabé visiting ex-girlfriend from when he lived in Ouagadougou.

Stateless pigmies lived in the handful of scruffy villages lining the 20-miles of no mans land between Congo and Cameroon. I was muddy and shirtless when I rounded a corner and unexpectedly arrived at the makeshift hut housing the immigration office. It looked like a makeshift slum house but an immaculately dressed guard stepped out and started shouting at me. His furious French was to the tune of: How dare you arrive here in such an indecent state. What if there had been women here. Go away and put a shirt on.I wheeled my bike back around the corner to dress. While doing so I spotted two village women emerge from the bushes with water containers. They wandered off down the track; topless like me.

The Chinese shopkeeper served his Chinese customer who walked outside, climbed into his Chinese car and drove away on the Chinese built road - presumably to his job on one of the numerous Chinese construction projects in the area. The Republic of Congo was proving to be quite different to how I had expected. To be fair, it was formerly known as "The People's Republic of Congo" so China's interest could be idealogical. However, I suspect that the large, timber-rich country of only 4 million people has other attractions for savvy eastern investors.

The sound of the Lulua river - a constant companion for many days - faded behind us. We'd spent three weeks navigating rapids and fretting about crocodiles or hippos tipping our old dugout our canoe but a vast field of waterfalls and churning white water had finally proved to intimidating for us and our leaking craft. We'd have to finish our crossing or the Congo by land.

Each carrying bags, Archie and I followed the two men wheeling our bicycles along the tight, jungle footpath. We ducked low branches and our clothes snagged on the thorns that sprouted rudely from just about every plant. We'd offered our pirogue (dugout canoe) to the small village of Lulua tribespeople in exchange for help portering kit. Two young boys with bamboo fishing rods walked behind us bearing our paddles (now downgraded in status from 'useful' to 'souvenir'). Their quiet chatter was accompanied by the soothing ambience of bird calls, falling leaves and distantly snapping twigs.

We were headed for a track on which we'd be able to cycle to a road and thence to a town. Having been forced to quit the river unexpectedly and maplessly, unsure where we even were, we felt a little like we'd been airdropped in the Congo with old bicycles and tasked with finding a way out. The accumulated exhaustion of the challenges we had faced on the river lapped at our still-standing bodies. Like a tide, it threatened to rear up and force us into involuntary rest before we reached an appropriate place.

The dense eyebrows of the minister danced furiously in accompaniment to the rapid-fire mixture of French and Swahili that spat from his mouth. Sweat poured from his wide, bald pate - and from the bodies of the 1,000-strong congregation folded into the 20x20m "Église Evangéliqué" in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Archie and I had been walking down a narrow back alley when we heard what sounded like a lively rally. We followed our ears towards the chanting and found the simple church (iron girders, breeze blocks and corrugated metal roof) with a woman lying in the dirt by the open door...retching. We slipped past and joined the fracas of faith within.

"To Zambia?""Yes.""By cycle?""Yes.""No!""Yes.""I do not believe you!""It is true.""Eh!"The Botswanan border guard's final exclamation is my favourite in Africa. The 'eh!' is a high-pitched squeak of semi-sincere disbelief. The more profound the disbelief, the higher the pitch. This amusing utterance acted as a partial salve for the following warning, shouted at my back as I pedalled away from the border:"Beware the lions - they will eat you up."

Two months off the bike: Cape Town, summer, friends, food, wine, an 80p/hour bartending job, beaches, the sad theft of my bicycle "Old Geoff" (a hardy veteran of 50 countries and 34,000 miles), the building of a new bike.

Location: Cape Town, South Africa Day 1,289 Miles on the clock: 34,370 “You! Where is your helmet?” “I don’t have one.” “It is law. You must wear a helmet.” “Are you sure that’s the law?” “Yes…I think so. Umm…ah ha! Your front tire is too bald. It is illegally bald! You must change it now.” “Yes. I will. Thank you for your concern. Have a nice day sir.” “Yes, yes, and you sir. Goodbye”

On my journey through Swaziland, I had been stopped by a policeman. With pride more or less intact on both sides, we parted.